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Tree Shear

Started by waggy5, February 21, 2010, 06:24:28 AM

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snowstorm

quadco makes some ctl heads with a dis saw. the saw moves. theres a vid of it on there website

Reddog

Quote from: Gary_C on December 28, 2010, 04:21:07 PM
Hot saws are very heavy spinning discs with cutter teeth but they are not well adapted and as far as I know never used on a processor as they cannot effectively be used as a cutoff to move in and out. And hot saws are used exclusively on felling heads only, never processors.

This is the Midwest definition below.
Gary_C correct me if you see it different.

Hotsaw:




Processor:


Slasher:

Reddog

Quote from: snowstorm on December 28, 2010, 04:33:32 PM
quadco makes some ctl heads with a dis saw. the saw moves. theres a vid of it on there website

Looks like you need a large track carrier for them.
CUTTING CAP 22" 24" OPERATING WEIGHT 6,050 lbs 6,500 lbs

Video:
http://www.quadco.com/videos/videos-ultimate-5660.html

Specs:
http://www.quadco.com/harvesters/ultimate-5660-2.html

SwampDonkey

Yes, it seems every region develops different names like they do trees. ;D These processors are called feller processors up here (Timbco Model T425 is popular), which cut with a circular chain saw-type cutting head and delimb the tree and buck the stem to length.  Everyone just calls them processors around here. What a lot do is use it as a feller only and combine with a grapple skidder for whole-tree logging. So, no it isn't a bar saw, it's a circular chain-saw type head. The darn things sound like a sawmill in the woods to me.

http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/research_papers/pdfs/scanned/OCR/ne_rp711.pdf

We also get a lot of stuff introduced back east here from Europe before you see it out your way.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Jamie_C

In Swamp's neck of the woods there are a lot of what we call "intermittant saw" heads like the Quadco's, here in Nova Scotia almost every head on a harvester/processor runs a bar and chain like a power saw.

Feller Bunchers here all run hot saws, shears haven't been used up here in years as the mills all refused to buy wood that was bunched using them due to the fiber damage. Contractors also realised just how much more wood you could bunch with a hot saw, 10,000 plus stems a week single shift is not uncommon with a lot of machines in this area.

Cedarman

We do not care about fiber pull as the trees will be left dry and turned into mulch.  What is the biggest shear that any of you are familiar with? 
I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

Gary_C

I don't think they went much over 16 inches, maybe 18 at the most. It took a lot of power and sharp knives to cut even 16 inches and then they were left behind for other types of cutting. Plus it's hard to open the knives that far and still not just push the tree out of the head when the knives close.
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

SwampDonkey

I guess the thread has branched out into 2 or 3 directions. ;D

But, as to the maximum I can't tell you myself as those machines are long gone from here.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

logloper

Quadco has two 21" shears advertised on their website. Timbco made 20" Shears, look on My Little Salesman. Lots of Hydro-Ax machines listed around with 20" shears. On flatter ground a shear is hard to beat. Much less maintenance, very fast. Depends on if you are sending your wood to a mill, and what kind of mill. We use a Dymax 14" shear on cedar, corrall poles,posts, and firewood logs. All saw logs we use a Risely Rotosaw head or we handfall them. We have cut some sawlogs out of our sheared wood, we just buck a 16" block of firewood off of sheared end. The shear doesnt even grunt to cut 14" cedar.

barbender

There is a local legend of an operator up here who can put 500 cords of wood on the ground in a day with a Timbco feller/buncher with a hot saw, with 2 crews of 2 grapple skidders, delimber and slasher working behind him. My point is that for speed in hammering down a lot of wood, a tracked buncher with a hot saw can't be touched by anything else. There are youtube videos of hot saw heads in action, if anyone hasn't seen one cut you should check one out. I haven't watched a shear in action but I don't see how they could even compare for speed.
Too many irons in the fire

northwoods1


Cedarman, I think you are in kind of a unique situation because you are cutting primarily or only cedar. No one really makes a large shear head because there would be very little market for it.
Shears are primarily designed for cutting & accumulating small diameter stems. You asked about how would a bar type sawhead perform in brush and with brushy trees?  :) :) I can remember back 20 years ago when sawheads were just coming in to the picture & shears were on the way out, at that time I was considering the purchase of a $10,000 dollar sawhead and I heard lots of horror stories. Bent bars, problems with brush preventing bar from retracting, high maintenence, slow...so I bought a shear and a saw. After going through the learning curve of how to use the saw, and there is one :D my conclusion is exactly that of Gary C., the shearhead it nothing but a large boat anchor. If I could sell mine for scrap price I would welcome someone to come and get it :D
Here is a pic from yesterday of my buncher with timbco sawhead mounted on it, I moved it on to a new job yesterday and I'll be using it to cut cedar which is on some high ground. No amount of brush or limby wood scares me when I am using this to cut, a big bushy tree I can just drive right up to and break the limbs of by lowering and raising the head, then grab it and saw it off in a couple seconds, put it on the ground wherever I want, and with the chains and fluid filled tires I just drive next to the stem of the tree and all the limbs will be instantly smashed off no problems. There is no comparing a skidsteer with a shearhead to a carrier like this with a sawhead.

 


Cedarman

Aaron and I have discussed getting something like what you have.  Until now the tree saw we have is used to cut everything up to about 10".  The shear is used on larger stuff.  We have the skid steers to move trees and they are easy for us to move from site to site.  The skid steer works very well for loading the grinder with trees.  They fuel efficient also.

But the trees are growing very fast.  1/2" to 1" per year at ground level, so will out strip our ability to whack them easily.

Also we will most likely get bigger moving equipment so would be able to transport a hydroax more efficiently too.
This is a great discussion and I am learning a good bit.
I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

barbender

Northwoods, is your machine a 3 wheel set up?
Too many irons in the fire

northwoods1

Cedarman I am learning a lot from this discussion also  :)

it warmed up here and I have to wait until tomorrow when the cold will be returning so I can begin work out at that job, rain and in the 40s' now. I cut a bunch of the larger stuff yesterday by hand and I decided to wait for the cold to begin skidding because the limbs break off very easily when it is cold... it is more difficult to move a larger machine like my hydro axe, and barbender yes it is a 3 wheeler, but I am thinking a person could find a carrier like mine or what Gary C. has with a sawhead for the same kind of money as what a good skidsteer and shearhead like you were talking about would cost. My machine cost $120,000 bucks in 1991 but there are a lot of used machines available for a small fraction of that , and these are for real production logging :) in decent wood it takes about 1 hour to cut and bunch up, in a very nice way,  a truckload of wood.

semologger

nice axe there northwoods ive been running my 221 for about 13 years now. How many times have you layed it on its side? Ive only done it once no big deal. I would be lost without it. 

northwoods1

Quote from: semologger on March 09, 2011, 07:19:47 PM
nice axe there northwoods ive been running my 221 for about 13 years now. How many times have you layed it on its side? Ive only done it once no big deal. I would be lost without it. 

I think I got it in 1991 so I have had it a while. I've tipped it over probably 4 or 5 times early on. I have fluid in the tires and that makes a big difference. The one advantage to a three wheeler like this is that you can turn on a dime which allows you to turn into the direction of the tree your carrying if it begins to tip. It really is amazing how large a tree you can cut and carry. Some species that have a really large canopy and if they are fully leafed out can get heavy and to large to pick up. Yes that machine has given me really good service in all these years I have never done a single thing to it other than replace some hydraulic hoses and most of them were going to the sawhead! I know I have cut well over 100,000 cords of wood with it, probably a lot more than that actually.

barbender

Northwoods, how does that third wheel behave in soft ground, like in a black spruce swamp? I've been thinking about those little Bell 3 wheels, I think they would be slick for what I do, but I was curious if it would work in the swamps. (For from down south, we only cut our swamps in the winter, when they are supposed to frozen, but it seems like they never freeze until they have been driven over a few times)
Too many irons in the fire

lumberjack48

barbender in our swamps, the Bell with tracks would be the way to go. I've been in swamps around Deer River, that a skidder wouldn't go in, we had to pack trails with a wide track cat.

If you drove a three wheel feller, with fluid in the tires in one of these swamps, that's right where you'd be in the swamp.

It wouldn't work with out the fluid, there's to much weight per sq inch on the ground, with rubber tires.
Third generation logger, owner operator, 30 yrs felling experience with pole skidder. I got my neck broke back in 89, left me a quad. The wife kept the job going up to 96.

northwoods1

Quote from: lumberjack48 on March 11, 2011, 10:45:40 AM
barbender in our swamps, the Bell with tracks would be the way to go. I've been in swamps around Deer River, that a skidder wouldn't go in, we had to pack trails with a wide track cat.

If you drove a three wheel feller, with fluid in the tires in one of these swamps, that's right where you'd be in the swamp.

It wouldn't work with out the fluid, there's to much weight per sq inch on the ground, with rubber tires.

For sure a hydro-axe like mine is a hard ground machine... I took it down to the cedar job because there was an area that was not to soft I knew for certain I could cut, and I was hoping for a colder winter. As it turned out I had no difficult freezing that job down and I could go just about anywhere with the buncher with impunity. As long as I worked the edge that I froze down and did not willy-nilly go driving around to far off the beaten path that is.

Mostly where my buncher works better than anything are selective cut jobs where limiting residual damage is the biggest factor. In the early 90s' I had to cut a lot of large federal sales that were just that. At that time the forest service was going away from aspen regeneration and clear cuts and they were trying to convert a lot of the stands to hardwood.

barbender

One more question ::) Is your sawhead a chainsaw bar type or a disc saw (hot saw) ?
Too many irons in the fire

northwoods1

Quote from: barbender on March 12, 2011, 01:09:48 AM
One more question ::) Is your sawhead a chainsaw bar type or a disc saw (hot saw) ?


Its a timbco bar saw, here you can see one mounted on a timbco carrier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkyhwkN5znU

lumberjack48

Now that's the way to go, it really kicks butt in that blow down, or right away clean up. 8) It would be a good place to be running semi carbide chain, there's a lot of dirt, in, round and on that kind of cutting.

I have cleaned up many blow down sales just like that with a cable skidder, this is just a little bit faster i would have to say, and takes the danger out of it.

Now if it would limb and cut to length wouldn't that make it sweet machine, getter done, in stead of making a another job out of it.
Third generation logger, owner operator, 30 yrs felling experience with pole skidder. I got my neck broke back in 89, left me a quad. The wife kept the job going up to 96.

treefarmer87

If i bought a bell and bunched with it would i speed up production pulling with my c5? i think my wife is going to buy me a new piece of equipment :) i need to decide what to get. if i had to do it over i would have bought a forwarder.
1994 Ford L9000
2004 Tigercat 718
1998 Barko 225
1999 John Deere 748G
FEC 1550 slasher
CTR 314 Delimber
Sthil 461
Sthil 250

lumberjack48

Absolutely, just don't put more in a bunch than you can pull, use you main line for the first choker.

I would lay a tree cross ways, then put 1 cd bunch's on that to make it easy hook'en, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to hook-an-book.

Depending on the timber or the weather, i usually had a man limning the bunch's in the woods.

I don't think a forwarder would be you answer, you still have to fall it, buck it, and limb it.

I would ask for a CTL machine, and a forwarder, and a new truck, than have her drive one. :D  [see what she says]
Third generation logger, owner operator, 30 yrs felling experience with pole skidder. I got my neck broke back in 89, left me a quad. The wife kept the job going up to 96.

northwoods1

Quote from: lumberjack48 on March 12, 2011, 10:52:04 AM
Now that's the way to go, it really kicks butt in that blow down, or right away clean up. 8) It would be a good place to be running semi carbide chain, there's a lot of dirt, in, round and on that kind of cutting.

I have cleaned up many blow down sales just like that with a cable skidder, this is just a little bit faster i would have to say, and takes the danger out of it.

Now if it would limb and cut to length wouldn't that make it sweet machine, getter done, in stead of making a another job out of it.

I think it looks to me he is doing right of way clean up too, I just love to watch a good operator you can tell it isn't that guys 1st day in that cab :)
He is probably laying that up for a stroke delimber and my guess is that stuff probably goes to the mill tree length. In the right kind of timber a machine like this can be used to clear right of way to very good effect. You can just tip the tree out, pick it up and saw the stump off out of the roadway, then make nice bunches all neat and organized waiting for the skidder. Saves a lot of stumping with the cat and eliminates the mess.

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